


God Help Me, Part 1

by ErinGayle



Series: God Help Me [1]
Category: Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Genre: Alcohol, Drug Use, Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Occurs previous to film, Period Typical Attitudes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:34:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24898519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ErinGayle/pseuds/ErinGayle
Summary: Captain K and Freddy Finkle have an eventful July of 1944 and end up in Falkenheim, Bavaria.
Relationships: Captain Klenzendorf (Jojo Rabbit)/Original Character(s), Freddy Finkel/Captain Klenzendorf
Series: God Help Me [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819291
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	1. Monday, July 3

#  The Last Straw

#  1944

###  Monday, July 3

“And, I know I am not the only person in this room who thinks this!” Karl looked around the room now that his profanity-laced tirade against the most recent defense plans from Berlin were briefed. He should never have breathed loudly in that room, let alone spoken, but he couldn’t let this waste of German lives go unopposed. The faces he saw were either shockingly pale or angrily florid. He heard a chair scrape on the floor and saw _Generalmajor **[1]**_ Krieger stand up. Krieger’s naturally tan face was tinged pink, and the whites of his cerulean blue eyes were large and slightly popping from the sockets. Krieger slapped Karl as hard as he could. When Karl defiantly looked back, Krieger slapped him again. Karl looked back a second time and was slapped a third. His boss was much more than embarrassed. He felt castrated in front of his superiors, peers, and subordinates by his uncontrollable aide and lover.

“Krieger,” the growly voice of General of Infantry von Groneberg broke the stunned silence. “Captain Klenzendorf’s court martial is scheduled for eight tomorrow morning, if he is still here. I’ll give him enough time afterwards for confession and last rights before his execution for gross insubordination, even if he is the worst, most proudly lapsed Catholic I’ve ever met. Take care of your man.”

Krieger grabbed Karl by the bicep and marched him from the room. From the vise like grip of Brigadier Krieger’s hand, Karl knew not to say a word. He’d been given much more latitude than any other general officer’s aide due to his experience and his previous relationship with Krieger. Krieger clenched his jaw to keep himself from screaming at Karl the whole way. Soon, what Karl said would be all over the headquarters. If the _feldjaegerkorps **[2]**_ got wind of this, there was nothing he could do for Karl. When they came to Krieger’s offices, one of the privates ran to open the door, and Krieger threw Karl into his office then slammed the door and locked it. Freddie Finkle as well as the rest of the general’s office staff stared, dumbfounded.

Karl cracked his knees as he hit the wooden floor. He stood up and faced his commander. “Sir—”

Krieger ripped open Karl’s _feldbluse **[3]**_ , the buttons flying around the office, and stripped it violently from Karl’s chest. He grabbed the placket of Karl’s four button shirt, regretting destroying the custom made garment, and ripped it through the hem. When he dragged that from Karl’s shoulders, the braces came down as well. Karl stood there stunned and bare chested, waiting. And, Krieger punched Karl as hard as he could. 

Karl staggered back and never saw the left fist coming for him. It was on his blind side. Krieger continued his assault, alternately hitting Karl’s face and then his chest or abdomen. When Karl fell, he would stupidly stagger back to his feet making no effort to protect himself. He finally fell for a last time, barely able to catch his breath. 

“Stop making me beat you, Karl.”

Karl couldn’t make sense of the words he was hearing. He got his arms under his chest but couldn’t push himself up again. He gasped to breathe and coughed violently when he did. He was trying to push himself up with his feet, but his boots got no traction on the oriental carpet. Krieger’s hands were on him again, one under his arm and the other holding him by the waist of his trousers. He thought his commander was going to roughly throw him on the couch or in the corner. Instead he was thrown over the arm. 

“Don’t you fucking move,” Krieger hissed as he reached around Karl’s waist and ripped open the button fly. 

Karl closed his eyes as his trousers and cotton shorts were ripped down. The world was spinning around him and Krieger. He could barely breathe. He couldn’t move if he tried. He felt Krieger’s hand on his limp penis, stroking it seductively. Karl tried to think of anything that would prevent him from getting hard. “Come on, Karl, or this is going to be much, much more painful for you than I intend.” Karl did everything he could to stop himself from orgasming, but in the end, Krieger’s malign hand produced what he wanted. He smeared his slippery palm around Karl’s sphincter before rubbing the head of his unusually hard and excited member in it. 

“Just remember, you earned this, Karl.” Krieger grabbed Karl by the hips and didn’t even try to hold back the force which with he ripped open his favorite aide and probably best lover ever. Karl screamed into the couch cushion. He grabbed at the sides of the cushion with his hands. Every thrust was as hard and deep as Krieger could make it; every withdrawal nearly complete. Karl cried and sobbed into the gold damask, irritating Krieger. He had daydreamed about violently raping Karl and Karl’s resulting ecstatic pleasure, but this wasn’t as romantic with Karl sobbing. When he stopped trying to hurt Karl, Karl’s sobbing quieted to painful moans, and Krieger could finally find a rhythm that brought him to a climax. Once Krieger was finished, he backed away from Karl and went to his private toilet.

In very small motions, Karl pushed his chest up and off the couch, then reached back with a wavering hand for the arm. He was unable to stand up and collapsed to sitting in the floor, his trousers and underwear around his knees. 

Krieger emerged from the washroom, picked up Karl’s ripped shirt and buttonless _feldbluse_ , and threw them at him. “Get dressed.” 

Karl’s stomach quivered, and his hands shook as he picked up his torn shirt. Although most of the money had gone to Switzerland, his godfather had left enough that Karl could provide himself with a standard of living above his pay grade, including fine cotton shirts. He looked at the devastating rip and used his shirt tail to wipe the stinging tears and sticky blood from his face. The idea of being messy went against his upbringing. As a child he couldn’t appear in the house dirty without some adult demanding he go wash and change. His hands slowly steadied as he pulled on the destroyed shirt. He realized he couldn’t secure it in his trousers as he had no buttons on those anymore. Getting up on his knees, Karl pulled up his underwear and trousers. He tucked in his shirt as he would have normally and pulled up his braces, hoping that would be good enough. He took several deep, painful breaths before pulling himself to standing and dragging the _feldbluse_ over his arms. He arranged himself as well as he could. 

Krieger was on the phone. He snapped at Karl and pointed to the side of his desk. Karl slowly walked over and stood straight despite the pain of doing so. “Sit.”

He caught the irritated glance from Krieger and sat down leaning his back against the desk. This was Krieger’s game with his lovers: absolute obedience, adulation, and humiliation. Karl bent up his knees and draped his hands over them and waited. Krieger hung up the phone and went to the door. He opened it and yelled for Finkle.

Freddie dashed up to the general. “Sir.”

“Pack your and the Captain’s things. You’re both leaving in the morning.”

Freddie glanced at Karl, whose head hung down between his arms. “Yes, sir.” He caught a glimpse of a bruise on Karl’s cheek.

Krieger closed his door and went back to his phone. He had to find somewhere specific to stash Karl for a good long while. As the summer sun began to sink, Karl raised his hand. Krieger glanced at the hand hovering over the edge of his desk. “What?”

“May I use the toilet?”

“Go and return to exactly that spot.”

It wasn’t painless, but Karl was able to stand up. He walked slowly to the washroom. His stomach felt like it had been violently stirred inside. In the washroom he took the time to sit on the toilet. He’d been raped before and knew why his underwear had felt wet. In the bathroom, he ripped off his shirt sleeves and folded them into two pads. One he arranged carefully in his underwear, the other he put in his pants pocket with his handkerchief. He hesitantly touched himself, drawing back a bloody finger. He hoped it was just a fissure and nothing deeper, though the way Krieger had strained to violently penetrate him as deeply as possible, Karl wouldn’t be surprised if he developed sepsis in the next few days and died. 

Karl washed his hands then his face. Looking at his beaten reflection, he knew he’d have at least one black eye and an aching jaw. He tested his teeth, and miraculously none were loose or broken. His nose was still straight. Krieger hadn’t beaten him as badly as he could have. He tried to make his ruined uniform as presentable as possible and went back to the side of the desk. Krieger snapped and pointed down while he was on the phone. Karl sat down on the floor again.

Krieger’s secretary, an _oberfeldwebel **[4]**_ , knocked on the door and entered. He saw Karl sitting in the floor wearing a destroyed uniform and unsuccessfully tried to hide his shock. The staff knew something had happened during the army group command and staff meeting, but not what. “Sir, do you wish your dinner brought from the officer’s mess?”

Krieger vigorously scribbled out something on a pad of paper. “Yes.”

“And, Captain Klenzendorf?”

“He can have whatever is being served in the enlisted mess.”

The sergeant glanced at Karl again. “Yes, sir.”

Krieger went back to the phone. Karl needed to be completely out of the Eastern Theater. Unfortunately, Italy was a disaster, and the French front was too busy to pick up the phone. Berlin staff was out of the question. Karl would be shot or hanged in a week. Krieger methodically went through everyone he knew since most offices were barely staffed overnight. It was possible that someone might report Karl to the _feldjaegerkorps_ over this whole incident. Sending him to a replacement battalion would make it easier for them to find him and send him to a _strafbataillon **[5]**, _or just summarily execute him. And, then there was Freddie Finkle. Karl was as attached to Freddie as he was to Karl. Freddie didn’t deserve any fall out from this, but he could easily be swept up in it. 

Dinner was brought, and while Krieger ate off china and crystal, Karl was given a metal cup of lukewarm barley soup, a thick hunk of brown bread, a chunk of cheese, and pickles. Krieger glanced at Karl eating. As usual, Karl exhibited the manners of a man very well raised. Karl spread out a fine linen handkerchief for the bread and cheese, setting the pickles on the bread. He drank the soup with finesse. Krieger had never once seen Karl bolt down food, and his hands and face were washed as soon after engagements as possible. He never insulted his meal, but he knew when and why to praise it. 

After he finished eating, Karl raised his hand again. “What?” Krieger answered.

“Can I have a cigarette?”

“Give me the case.” Krieger wanted to be sure Karl didn’t have any drugs in there that might lessen the austerity of his predicament. Karl was well known to have a stash of Pervitin and barbiturates, and if anyone had cocaine, it was Karl. He held up his cigarette case. Krieger took the silver box, but when he looked at it, he realized it was sterling silver with Florentine engraving. He opened the case and felt the cigarettes as well as looked under them. Lighting one cigarette, he handed it to Karl. Under the cigarettes were two pictures: one of a young Karl and another young man and a second of a beautiful, gamine woman in a slinky, beaded dress laughing upwards at the camera as the lens drank in her sensuous body. 

“Who’s the woman?” Krieger lit one of his own cigarettes. “She’s quite beautiful.” Krieger pried the photo out of the case and looked on the back. All it said was _Meine_ _Schatzie **[6]** Dez 1925._ “Did you date her?”

“I did,” came floating quietly from the side of the desk, the words rising along with the cigarette smoke.

“Why didn’t you marry her?” Every gay man Krieger knew was married.

“I was stupid.”

Krieger nodded. “You were. If you had a wife and a home, I could justify convalescing you, perhaps even retiring you, with delayed battle fatigue and in need of a very, long rest.”

Karl thought to himself that had he married his darling Schatzie, he would have left Germany with her years ago. He should have left Germany before the Nazis came to power whether he married her or not. “ _Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight._ ”

“Who said that?”

“Marcus Aurelius.”

Krieger had been continually surprised by Karl’s educational depth. He may not have been brilliant, but he was more well-read than any other officer Krieger had met as well as deeply versed in the history of military strategy. Krieger reassembled Karl’s cigarette case and slid it to the edge of the desk. Karl’s hand appeared, and the case disappeared over the edge. Using his phone, Krieger summoned his secretary. “Take the dishes and wake me at 3. Bring Finkle at 4, and have my car packed with the Captain and Finkle’s gear and ready to go with my driver at 5.”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant glanced at Karl, still quietly sitting in the floor.

As the evening drew on, the phone began to ring. Krieger answered each call in a desperate attempt to find Karl a new job. Krieger was trying to give Karl to someone who would keep him close and safe. However, most of his friends were in chaotic or dire situations. They couldn’t guarantee anything, especially a position where Karl could be protected from the _feldjaegerkorps_ or the Gestapo. Krieger began to worry that Karl’s last night was quickly slipping away. A call came late from Berlin. There was a position, but it wasn’t in a headquarters or on the line. There was no command. There wasn’t even much of a chain of command. A small town in northern Bavaria needed an experienced officer to oversee the Hitler Youth program there. The previous civilian leader focused too much on political indoctrination and not enough on introductory combat skills. 

Krieger leaned over and saw that Karl had fallen asleep sitting up. Karl had that in common with the average soldier: he could sleep anywhere in any position. “He’ll do it. I need to send him today.” Krieger took down the information needed for orders and hung up. He’d have to type the orders himself, a skill he kept secret from his staff. 

As he walked across his office, he saw Karl still propped against the desk. He should have kept Karl on a much shorter, more disciplined leash. He’d never had a better hatchet man, though. Karl’s appearance in lower level units in the division was dreaded by the field grades and met with relief by junior officers and enlisted men. It helped that Krieger was himself General von Groneberg’s hatchet man. Krieger detoured to the couch and grabbed one of the silly pillows with fringe. He dropped the pillow on the floor. “Lay down, Karl.”

Karl’s eyes flittered open. He saw the pillow and sank down to it. Krieger continued to his secretary’s desk and typed out the orders while the night runner went to the train station for tickets.

  


Karl hurt and could barely sleep. It was enough that Krieger thought he was asleep. The general poked at his failed aide with the toe of his boot. “Karl.” When he saw Karl barely lift his head, he walked to the gold couch. Karl struggled to get his aching body to work correctly. He saw Krieger sitting on the end of the couch. He glanced at the door and noticed the lock was engaged. 

“Here.” Krieger snapped his fingers and pointed at the floor in front of him.

Karl slowly bent over and picked up the pillow before walking to the couch. He dropped the pillow on the couch and knelt in front of Krieger. It was so painful to breathe. Krieger leaned forward and rubbed Karl’s hair affectionately. “Such thick hair,” he said affectionately as he caressed the edges of Karl’s face and ears. “You’ve been such a pleasure to have again. You understand why I beat you the way I did, don’t you? You can’t walk out of here uninjured with any shred of dignity or honor intact. Everyone else has to see a beaten, defeated man, and not the nearly indomitable, fierce eyed, recklessly brave captain we all know and love.”

Krieger bent down and kissed Karl. Karl could tell the man was hungry and eager. He wanted to hear Karl beg for forgiveness. Karl didn’t resist the kisses, but he didn’t hold his head up either. Krieger had to tilt Karl’s jaw upward. “Now, my sweet boy, one last time.” He drew his thumb across Karl’s lips.

Karl shifted his eyes down. He stared at the front edge of the sofa. He hated gold damask. The thought of being hit again terrified Karl. He unbuttoned Krieger’s trousers and vigorously applied his mouth to his commander’s shaft, before he even had it out of the silk underwear. Krieger sighed and ran his hand back and forth from the crown of Karl’s head to his shaved nape. His other hand slipped beneath Karl’s ruined shirt and gently held his better shoulder. One of Karl’s sexual talents was an incredible skill with fellatio. His tongue teased and soothed while his throat could tighten around a spasming penis, calming it in a silken slipperiness. As Krieger relaxed, he regretted losing Karl. He’d never have a blow job this good ever again. 

Freddie nervously waited for the clock to tick over to 4 am. Krieger was a stickler about time. Four meant four, not 3:58. At four am Freddie firmly knocked on the carved door. 

“Come in.”

Freddie opened the door and visibly paled at the sight of Karl, sitting again on the floor at the side of Krieger’s desk. “Sir.”

“Take the captain and get him cleaned up. You two are leaving at 5.” Krieger wanted to keep their destination to himself until the end. He would only relinquish his power over Karl at the last moment. Krieger didn’t comprehend that Karl didn’t care. He played his lovers’ games when he cared to. Karl desired pleasure and to know he had successfully pleasured another. 

“Yes, sir.” Freddie stepped forward and bent to help Karl, who waved him off. 

“I’m fine, Finkle.” Karl slowly and stiffly got to his feet. “Sir.” He left the office with Freddie, but once to the stairs, he nearly collapsed. Freddie caught him before he fell. “Just get me to a shower,” he groaned as he leaned gratefully on his sergeant. As the two walked across the pea gravel courtyard to the officers’ quarters, Karl suddenly bent over and vomited.

“Do you need to take a moment?” Freddie asked as he held Karl under his chest and around the waist.

“I just want a shower,” Karl coughed as he stood up.

The officers’ quarters had private toilets for each room and large shower rooms for the floor, but at four am no one was up and around. Freddie helped Karl down the corridor tracking each room as they passed it to be sure the lights were out. He got Karl into a shower room, where Karl slid down the white tile walls into the white tile floor. Freddie started the warm water and ran back to Karl’s room for his shower kit and a towel. He also left his own _feldbluse_ , socks, and boots there.

Getting Karl undressed was easy with the lack of buttons yet hard as Karl could barely raise his arms. He gritted his teeth and trembled when Freddie moved him. Freddie hoisted him up and got him to lean his forehead and arms on a wall. “You have to stand up, Captain,” Freddie ordered Karl softly as he soaped up a washcloth. If Karl had been merely dirty, he could have been shoved under the shower. This required deft touching. 

Freddie started with Karl’s back, scarred but not bruised. As the soapy cloth ran over Karl’s buttocks, they clenched tightly. Freddie could see black and green finger bruises on the back of Karl’s hips. Kneeling in the draining water, Freddie saw blood on Karl’s thighs. As he washed it away, the water ran pink. “You’ve got blood on your legs.”

Karl didn’t say anything. This was the first time in a long time that he had someone to take care of him after violent sex. Usually he just sat tightly balled in the shower by himself hoping that the water could wash everything away and he didn’t get a fever. 

“Let me get your arms.” 

Karl slapped his arms out along the tiled wall. He felt the softness of the cloth and the gentle hand under it. Freddie reached around and washed Karl’s chest, eased the cloth over his groin, then bent down again to wash the front of Karl’s legs. He took a cursory look at the back of Karl’s legs, too. “I think you’re bleeding,” he said matter of factly as he wiped away scarlet trickles of blood.

“Yeah.” Karl didn’t want to talk.

“Turn around so I can get your face.” Freddie couldn’t stifle the gasp at Karl’s beaten face and chest. He had felt the guarding as he washed Karl’s chest, but he hadn’t imagined this. “Jesus Christ.”

“Just get it over with,” Karl muttered. Freddie barely let the washcloth touch Karl’s face. Karl trembled and clenched his jaw. “And, get my razor. I’m not going out there unshaven.” Freddie thought this was a terrible idea but said nothing. He helped Karl sit under the hot water and went for the razor and shaving soap.

Freddie soaped up Karl’s cheeks and neck and picked up the straight razor. “I always feel like I’m going to slit your throat with this.”

“Just use the regular razor then.” Karl tilted his head back. Every touch of the razor was an agony. He was glad he was soaking wet so that the tears went unnoticed. 

Freddie kept his hand steady and didn’t flinch, though he knew Karl must feel every minute scrape of the safety razor. When he was finished, he got Karl to standing and helped him dry off. Freddie also glanced at the floor to see if there was any blood where Karl had been sitting. A slight pinkishness was running toward the drain. As Freddie walked Karl back to his room, another officer bound for an early shower almost bumped into them. 

“Shit, Karl. What the hell did you do?” 

“Mouthed off. Again.” It was a barely concealed secret that Krieger occasionally hit his favorite aide, though Karl always waved it off as a sparring accident. 

Freddie maneuvered Karl around the other man and got him into his room, which was slightly better than the average captain’s due to him being Krieger’s aide. Karl sat on his bed and looked at Freddie. “Finkie, you’re soaking wet.” He was barely able to raise his hands to futilely wipe at the wet shirt.

Freddie appreciated the guilt in Karl’s eye. “I have time to change. Let’s get you dressed. Then, you stay here. I’ll come get you with a couple of kids to drag your trunks.” He put Karl’s feet in his underwear and then into a clean pair of trousers. Freddie had pulled the newest and best repaired uniform for this deliberate shaming.

“You don’t even call them soldiers.” Karl pulled up and fastened his bottoms. He could barely move his shoulders, and Freddie had to put his shirt on him and button it.

“They can’t shave yet. Push your feet into your socks.” Freddie never thought he would spend part of this war as the caretaker of a heroic yet reckless officer. Karl lost his eye because even though he saw the grenade coming, he didn’t move once the tank was in his sights. With Karl dressed, Freddie stood back and looked him over. He’d transferred everything from the ruined uniform to this one. He had a precise eye from years of cutting flowers to the right lengths for his parents and used it as any proud NCO would. All the badges were precisely where they should be. Captain Karl Reichardt Klenzendorf was going out of the Third Panzer Army[7] sharp. “OK, you lay down a few minutes. Do you know where you’re going?”

Karl laughed painfully as Freddie eased him down on the perfectly made bed, which Freddie had made the previous morning. “They could be sending me to my own funeral for all I know.”

  


[1] Brigadier General—henceforth referred to as Brigadier in text.

[2] An extrajudicial police force within the Wehrmacht empowered to root out treason and other political crimes.

[3] Field blouse: The gray tunic worn by the German Army. 

[4] Master Sergeant

[5] Punishment battalion for soldiers convicted of crimes instead of being jailed, sent to a concentration camp, or executed. These battalions were usually sent on the highest risk missions. A soldier who survived his time in a strafbataillon could return to a regular unit.

[6] My treasure, a term of endearment

[7] In July 1944 Third Panzer Army was part of Army Group North and outside of Schlossberg, about sixty miles east of Königsberg. Their objective was to maintain possession of the Baltics. East Prussia was part of MyCaptain K’s old stomping grounds, and he speaks both Russian and Polish.


	2. Tuesday, July 4

###  Tuesday, July 4

When Karl stepped into the mid-summer early morning, he thought it was exceedingly bright. Ever since his injury at Kursk, his remaining eye had less tolerance for brightness. He kept sunglasses in his right breast pocket. It was continually unbuttoned, which drove Freddie slightly mad. The shiny, black staff car seemed like it was a mile away. It was no more than fifty meters, but they were a long fifty meters today. Karl took a deep breath and walked across the pea gravel. He couldn’t look aside on his right, so he turned his head. So many people who should have been getting ready for breakfast were looking out the command building windows. The rumor had passed that the renowned Captain Klenzendorf had finally done it: he’d crossed someone powerful enough to court martial and execute him without repercussion. The only reprieve was to leave with orders by morning. Most of the officers and NCOs were amazed at the dedication and loyalty General Krieger had to his aide.

Krieger was standing on the steps watching Karl and Freddie. This was not the humiliated dismissal he desired. Karl was leaving a tragic hero instead of the whipped dog he was supposed to be. Krieger had debated whether to have any last words with Karl. He still hadn’t told Karl what his orders were. He felt obligated and walked out to his car. Karl crisply saluted despite the pain as he approached Krieger. Krieger returned the salute and handed an envelope to Freddie. 

“I don’t think anyone’s ever been drummed out with such an illustrious gathering.” Karl looked up at the building’s full windows again.

“Do yourself a favor, Karl, and keep your mouth shut.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, get a girlfriend.”

“Perhaps, sir.”

Krieger sighed. He couldn’t look Karl in the eye for the sunglasses, but he felt Karl’s blind eye staring at him. “Why don’t you put a patch over that eye? It makes everyone uncomfortable.”

“Because it makes everyone uncomfortable, sir. Maybe it reminds all the generals of all the other eyes, limbs, and brains left behind on the battlefield or thrown in the incinerators of hospitals because of their mistakes.”

“Self-righteous bitterness isn’t attractive, Karl.” Krieger turned to his driver. “Put them on the train to Berlin yourself.”

“What should I tell them when they ask why I’ve been sent back from the front?”

Krieger shook his head. “I don’t know, and I don’t really care. Tell them you need two eyes to be a functioning part of the war effort.” He saw the angry arch of Karl’s right eyebrow rising above the edge of his sunglasses. Krieger was almost sorry he’d insulted Karl’s injury.

Karl saluted again. Krieger could ignore the salute and just leave. But, being scrupulously formal felt even more vengeful. He returned the salute, and Karl got in the backseat. Freddie rode up front with the driver.

Krieger immediately went upstairs to General von Groneberg’s office, where even he was watching the staff car leave. “Sir, he’s gone.”

Von Groneberg was already on his second cigarette of the day. “I had to do it, Walther. You understand that, don’t you?” Von Groneberg had guessed at Krieger’s attachment to Karl. Walther let his arm linger on Karl’s shoulders or set his hand in the small of Karl’s back too long. More than once, von Groneberg noticed an excited flush in Krieger when his aide whispered in his ear. There had been rumors about Klenzendorf, but no one really cared if the man who always volunteered to be at the tip of a formation or the back of the rearguard also enjoyed a bit of consensual buggery. 

Walther stood next to his commander. “He only said what everyone below the rank of colonel thinks. They do all want to go home, have a beer in the garden, and eat their mother’s _kartoffelauflauf **[1]**_.”

“He also told me to go fuck myself, the General Staff, and all the horses we rode in on. Where’d you send him?”

“Well, on August 1st he will assume leadership of the Ost Falkenheim Hitler Youth.” Krieger lit a cigarette. 

Finally looking at Krieger, von Groneberg could only ask, “Where the hell is that?”

“Somewhere in Bavaria. Damned if I know.”

Von Groneberg sighed. “It’s a shame what’s become of Karl: depressed and debauched.” He remembered a less subdued Karl from years ago in Konigsberg, one he had found in bed with his wife and then again with his daughter.

In the staff car, Freddie opened the envelope. He found two train tickets to Berlin, reservations at the Hotel Esplanade, and the typed orders. “Captain, do you want to know your orders?” There was no sound from the backseat. “Captain?” Freddie asked as he looked over the seat. Karl had fallen over and was snoring. “It can wait.”

At the train station, when Freddie presented their tickets on boarding, he was directed to second class while Karl was sent to first. “He needs to be with me,” Karl flatly stated.

“Sir, first class is restricted to officers.”

Karl yanked off his sunglasses. “I’m blind in one eye, I can’t lift my arms due to my shoulders being damaged from bullets and shrapnel. My hip was shot. I am covered in fucking bruises from being thrown from a stupid car accident caused by the dumbest damn Pole I’ve yet to meet. And, when I get home, I must tell my wife she’s now a nursemaid. I can’t goddamn get dressed or use the toilet by myself! I need my sergeant!”

The conductor quailed under both Karl’s tantrum and the medals and badges on his chest. “Yes, sir.” He showed them to an empty compartment and arranged the seat markers to show that it was full. “Your trunks are in the baggage car, Captain. Do you wish to reserve seats in the dining car for breakfast, _mittagessen **[2]**_ , and supper?”

Freddie saw Karl’s jaws clench and his brows begin to cross. “Captain Klenzendorf has been ill from his wounds. Can we have meals in the compartment?”

The conductor barely glanced at Karl. “Of course, Sergeant.” He closed the compartment door, and Freddie pulled the shades. Freddie turned around to see that Karl had already fallen over on his side, hugging his chest and pulling up his knees as tight as he could. Freddie put Karl’s hat on the rack and took off his sunglasses for him. He went through Karl’s valise, which he had packed neatly but had become jumbled since. He knew there was aspirin, Pervitin[3], bromide sleeping pills, and barbiturates in there. Freddie hesitantly opened the small silver compact with a flowing female form. He was relieved that it was clean. He guessed that Karl had rummaged for it and been sorely disappointed.

Karl woke up suddenly as his stomach lurched. His mouth tasted like stale whiskey, and he vaguely remembered Freddie coaxing him to take some tablets then holding his head up enough to take a swallow from his flask. “I’m going to vomit,” Karl declared.

Freddie jumped up and eased Karl out of the compartment to the lavatory. He’d just gotten Karl’s _feldbluse_ off when Karl leaned over and vomited into the toilet. Karl was trying to hold himself up with his hands braced on the walls. Freddie had Karl by the Y of his braces and his waistband. The rocking motion of the train didn’t help, and Karl vomited again. When he thought he was finished, he reached for his flask in his blouse, but Freddie held out a canteen of water. With a resigned sigh, Karl rinsed his mouth and spat down the toilet. Freddie helped him back to the compartment, where a porter was arranging a dining cart covered in a starched linen cloth. Karl dropped down on the seat and leaned his head against the paneled wall. He stared out a tiny sliver of window the shade didn’t quite cover. Poland was so green in the summer. It hardly looked like there had been a war.

“Karl,” Freddie gently said once the porter was gone. “How about some food?”

Karl didn’t even give the lunch brought for him a first look. “I’m fine, Freddie. Eat what you want. I don’t want to vomit again.”

Freddie went to the dining car between meals and asked the chef to prepare a plain broth soup for Karl for supper. When it was served, Freddie had to wheedle Karl into eating it, eventually relying on guilt that it wasn’t on the menu and the chef had made it especially for him. Karl never rejected anything someone lower than him in rank or class did out of kindness or concern. It sometimes bothered Freddie that Karl seemed to take him so much for granted. 

Freddie had never been to Berlin. Dortmund wasn’t a small town, but it was an industrial city with little glamour. Everywhere he looked in Berlin, glamour and old Imperial ambience was furtively being maintained to cover the stress and damage from bombings. Freddie hailed a large taxi at the Freidrichstrasse train station while standing next to a porter and a pale Karl. 

“Where to, Herr Hauptmann?” the driver asked as he hefted the trunks into the car.

Freddie looked at the travel orders. “We have reservations at the Esplanade.”

Karl perked up. “Like hell. Take us to the K’Frsten Wilhelm in Charlottenburg.”

“Captain, the travel—”

“I am not staying at a bombing raid’s prime target on Potsdamer Platz, Sergeant. Take us to the K’Frsten Wilhelm.”

The taxi driver nodded. “Yes, sir.” Karl got in the back, and Freddie rode up front.

At the quiet hotel just off the Ku’Damm, Karl negotiated for a suite at a better than published rate. Freddie watched from the mountain of luggage. He had a bag and a rucksack. Karl had two trunks, a valise, another larger suitcase, and a rucksack. Two elderly bellhops took the baggage in the freight elevator, while Freddie, Karl, and the head bell hop took the brass grilled elevator to the top floor. Freddie’s jaw dropped in awe at the suite. It was nicer than his parents’ home. The polished oak herring bone floors were covered in Oriental carpets. The living area had a suite of two sofas and two club chairs with occasional tables and lamps, a dining table for four under a crystal chandelier, and a large writing desk. The ornately plastered walls were lined with floor to ceiling windows and velvet drapes. 

“Hauptman Klenzendorf, the gentleman’s bedroom.” The head bell hop turned on the lights in a room with a canopied double bed, double wardrobe, desk, and reading chair. “And the bath.” Another door was opened to a marble bath with a shower over the tub and a sink. “The toilet.” It impressed Freddie that there was a literal bath room and a toilet room. “And, the gentleman’s gentleman’s room.” Freddie assumed that meant his room. It was a simple room with a bed, dresser, and straight back chair as well as its own discrete door to the corridor. 

Karl thanked the bellman, tipped him, and sent him on his way. He eased himself down on the couch. Freddie sat on the edge of a club chair. “Is the Army going to pay for this?” Freddie asked.

“No,” Karl half laughed. “I am. Don’t worry about it. I don’t have anyone to send my pay to. It just piles up in my bank account. If I am forced to recover from my drumming out in Berlin, I’m going to do it right. Are you hungry?” 

“I had supper on the train.”

Karl nodded and leaned back on the couch. He tried to wait for the bell hops with his trunks but wanted to take a bath and go to bed. “I’m going to take a bath. When the bell hops get here, tip them five marks each.”

“Five marks?”

“When you tip well, people forget what they see.” Karl slowly stood up and went into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him and started the water running. He sat down on the stool, realizing that the bruises on his chest and stomach really did prevent him from getting undressed. His father would have said the gods of irony were getting back at him for the tantrum in Poland. He heard the bell hops dragging around the bags and then the door closed. 

Freddie knocked on the door. “Karl, do you want your pajamas?” He cracked the door to peek in and saw Karl sitting on the stool still dressed. “You want some help?”

“Please.”

Freddie helped Karl undress and get in the bathtub. “Do you need help washing up?”

Karl closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the tub. “I don’t know yet, Freddie,” he said tiredly. He felt Freddie lift his head then lay it down gently on a folded towel. “Thanks, Freddie. You always take good care of me.”

After he kissed Karl’s unbruised temple, Freddie left him to soak but kept the door ajar so he could hear if Karl needed him again. As he sorted and put away Karl’s clothes, he unholstered Karl’s Walther P38. He listened carefully and only heard Karl moving in the tub. Freddie released the magazine then checked for a chambered round. He was not surprised to find one. He tipped it out, checked again, then replaced the pistol in the holster. Karl would know immediately on picking up the holster that his pistol wasn’t loaded, but it was safer to face Karl’s wrath than to let him have a loaded weapon right now. Freddie took the magazine and hid it in his own belongings. 

“Freddie,” Karl tiredly called.

Freddie laid out Karl’s pajamas and underwear on the bed then went to the bathroom door. “Yes, Karl?”

“I need help.” In the bathroom, Karl had tried to wash himself, but his shoulders and chest hurt every time he breathed, let alone moved. Freddie came in and saw Karl sitting in the bathtub with his arms around his knees. Freddie glanced at Karl’s red eyes. He didn’t say anything, just knelt next to the tub and started to bathe Karl. 

“I’ll shave you in the morning,” Freddie softly told Karl as he helped Karl stand up. Karl felt like a child waiting for his nanny to wrap him in a towel, dry, and dress him since that was exactly what Freddie did. Karl was sitting on the end of his huge bed when they heard the evening service knock. It startled Freddie, but Karl told him to let the maid in to do whatever it was she was supposed to. He shifted himself to the reading chair and pretended to read while she turned down his bed. He heard her ask Freddie about breakfast, and Freddie told her they needed to eat in the room, since the Captain was recovering from injuries. Karl smiled as he listened to Freddie order breakfast.

“That’s done,” Freddie said, returning from ushering out the maid. “Do you need help getting in bed?”

Karl managed to get in bed. “No.”

“You need to take some aspirin before you go to sleep.”

Karl watched Freddie disappear into the bathroom where his medicine bottles were. “No, I don’t.”

Freddie ignored Karl’s resistance, and Karl finally put the aspirin in his mouth and swallowed them with water. He laid down, and Freddie pulled the covers around him. “Are you going to be ok tonight?”

Karl looked up at Freddie leaning over him. “Are you going to sleep with me? It’s a big enough bed.”

“Do you want me too?”

“Yes. Just roll around sufficiently on the other one, and make sure the doors are locked. What time are they bringing breakfast?”

“She said eight.”

“Then we need to be out of bed by then because she’ll also want to open the curtains.”

Staying in a high end hotel seemed ridiculously intrusive to Freddie. “OK, I’ll be back in a bit.” Freddie turned off the room light but left on a small table lamp when he left.

Karl lay in the near dark and felt tears in his eyes. He would never forget the pain Krieger inflicted upon him. He’d felt not only ripped but shredded. Why hadn’t he even held up an arm to block Kreiger’s fists? He tried to stop the tears, but they kept coming. When Freddie returned and joined him, Karl put his head on Freddie’s bare chest. Freddie felt the tears slide onto his skin. “You’re ok, Karl. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I only told them the truth,” he murmured.

Freddie kissed Karl’s forehead. “You stood up for thousands of average German soldiers. They don’t want to hear that.” He held Karl as close as possible. This was the first time they’d ever been able to sleep together like this. Freddie hated that it was because Karl had suffered so badly.   
  


Karl didn’t leave the suite for nearly a week. He didn’t get dressed or shave either, preferring to remain in his pajamas, which Freddie insisted he change each day. The maid had to clean around Karl, as he stretched out, refusing to move, on the couch. That Karl didn’t spend the days in bed in the dark was a small consolation. Freddie ordered room service and went to the desk to inquire about cigarettes, newspapers, full bottles of whiskey, and laundry service. The manager would inquire as to Captain Klenzendorf’s health and offer to call the house doctor. Each time Freddie would thank him and say the Captain had been in a car accident and just wished to recover from the injuries alone. Freddie also called the _Jugend_ Ministry to ask what Karl needed to do there. He used the same excuse about a car accident to put off meetings as long as possible.

Freddie didn’t know what he was supposed to do for Karl when he would look over and see Karl in a tight ball, weeping uncontrollably. All he could do was sit next to him and try to hold him. When he touched Karl, Karl would tense or his muscles jerk. He rationed out Karl’s alcohol, counted the number of barbiturates in Karl’s stash, and tried to get food into him each day. The one thing Freddie wouldn’t do, and Karl never asked, was go to the local pharmacies and discretely inquire about cocaine. Freddie had been with Karl long enough to notice that when they went through a ruined street, if there was an empty pharmacy, Karl managed to search it. 

Karl wouldn’t talk about what Krieger did, but from the injuries Freddie had a very good idea. Karl never mentioned Krieger, whether by name or not. Often Freddie sat on the couch with Karl’s head in his lap, just stroking his hair. He wondered if this had happened before. 

Freddie knew he was lucky that he could say the only painful sex he’d ever had had been fumbled sex where they either didn’t know what they were doing or didn’t have the luxury of time, space, or light. No one had ever purposely hurt him. And, Freddie couldn’t imagine why Krieger had raped Karl. Karl had an appointment with a firing squad. Surely Krieger’s wounded pride could have been assuaged by simply letting General von Groneberg carry out the sentence. Beating, raping, and then scrambling to find a job that would save Karl’s life seemed superfluous. 

The little time when Freddie wasn’t running Karl’s errands or trying to comfort him, he used to find plants and sketch them in a new sketch book. A set of colored pens was exorbitantly expensive, and Freddie settled for colored pencils and watercolors. Many of Berlin’s parks had been plowed up for vegetable gardens, and Freddie looked for wild vines and weeds in the cracks and crevices of the city. He sat at the writing desk with his specimens, listening for sobs and occasionally looking over at Karl, abandoning his own interests to soothe Karl from whatever tortured him. 

On Sunday evening, Freddie laid out Karl’s best uniform for the next day. “You still haven’t asked where they’re sending you, Karl.”

Karl didn’t care. He thought he’d made that quite clear. “What’s the difference?” he asked as he turned the page in a magazine. He tapped his cigarette on a crystal ashtray.

“This is different.”

“You’ll take me there tomorrow.”

Freddie sighed. “You’re really going to wish I had told you.”

“Don’t. Care.” Karl reached for his whiskey and finished off the glass. 

[1] Potato casserole. Everyone’s mother has her own recipe.

[2] Midday meal: lunch.

[3] Pervitin is the best meth ever made. It was handed out like candy during the invasions of Poland and France, and men going more than fourteen days without sleep were not unheard of. A wonderful source, and compelling read, on the use of drugs during the Nazi era is Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler.


	3. Monday, July 10

###  Monday, July 10

Karl stood across Torstrasse from what he remembered as the Jonas Department Store. He was shocked speechless and simply held up his hand, waiting for Freddie to give him the orders. “The HJs?”

“Yes, sir. I told you it was different, sir.”

“You said it was different not absurd.” Karl looked down at the orders. He had only one eye left, but it read as good as two. The orders definitely had him taking over an HJ unit. “Maybe I can find a streetcar to jump in front of.”

“Captain, maybe we should give them a chance.”

Karl sighed. “That’s the problem with Protestants. You’re all so damned optimistic. You need a good dose of Catholic guilt about the inevitable sorrow of the Virgin Mary.” He handed back the orders. “Alright. Let’s go.”

Karl and Freddie did their best to not look shocked the entire morning as they were passed from one office to the next for their one week orientation to the HJ’s. Karl frequently leaned over and whispered, “Do you remember this?” Freddie inevitably whispered back, “No.” At noon, a stone faced woman with a severe attachment to the ideology of Nazism released them for the day with instructions to return each morning at 9. Freddie followed Karl out of the building but had to yank him by his sleeve so that he did not actually walk in front of the streetcar coming toward them from Karl’s blind side on Torstrasse. 

“Sir, should we get a taxi?” Freddie asked. He imagined Karl walking in front of streetcars and trucks at every corner. He’d been blind in that eye for nearly a year. Freddie thought the man would have become accustomed to exercising a bit more caution.

Karl took out his cigarettes. “No, let’s walk a bit. I’ve been hiding in my pajamas for the last week.”

Freddie hastily got on Karl’s blind side. He had noticed that Karl’s crying jags were less frequent and intense. He didn’t know if time, alcohol, drugs, or a combination were responsible. Each night Karl was also less tense when he slept, and he didn’t jump or flinch as anxiously every time Freddie touched him. “Feeling better, sir?” 

“I don’t know. But, I do know I’ve just visited the largest, unregistered insane asylum in Germany.” At Alexanderplatz, Karl directed Freddie to the S-bahn. He knew exactly where he wanted to go and how to get there but checked the schedule anyway for Freddie’s benefit. This line went directly back to the Ku’damm. 

Freddie sat in a velvet upholstered chair while Karl talked to the tailor. He not only wanted a new uniform to replace the one Krieger destroyed but new boots as well. Freddie listened to them haggle over price and availability. Once again, having money seemed to entail so many extraneous steps to getting what you wanted. There were measurements to take, discussions of cloth, how were the seams to be sewn. Freddie appreciated walking into the supply warehouse and being tossed a uniform that he could alter himself if necessary. And, the amounts of money Karl and the tailor were tossing about seemed nearly obscene. 

“Finkle,” Karl called after he and the tailor had agreed on price and delivery at the end of the week. “Off we go.”

“Where to, sir?”

“The _spielwaren **[1]**_.”

This was out of the blue for Freddie. What did Karl want? A train set? He was forty years old and had no children or even relatives. “A toy store?”

Karl nodded. “I am about to embark on training a bunch of fourteen year olds. I’m going to do it right. We need toy soldiers.”

[1] Toy store


	4. Friday, July 21

###  Friday, July 21

The phone sharply ringing in the middle of the night snatched Karl from sleep. He stumbled around the suite trying to find it without turning on every light. “Hello?”

“God damn it, Karl, what took you so long?” a hissing voice asked

A cold shock went through Karl’s stomach. Hearing Walther Krieger almost made him wet himself. “Brigadier Krieger?”

“Listen to me, Karl. Do you have a pen and paper?”

Karl saw a pen and notepad next to the phone. “Yes, sir.” 

“Get packed and be out of Berlin first thing in the morning. You have to leave immediately. I’ve got a car set up for you. Just get to the motor pool.” Krieger started listing out directions and people to speak with as well as order amendments numbers. 

“I don’t understand, sir,” Karl blurted out while copying Krieger’s instructions.

Krieger was hurriedly rifling his files to remove anything even vaguely incriminating. “Von Stauffenberg and his little gang tried to rush Plan Valkyrie. God, I hate grafs[1]. Karl, you know I love you, boy. Now, just do what you’re told. Get out of Berlin. Keep your mouth shut, your head down, and your pants buttoned.” 

Karl heard the phone disconnect and stared at it a moment. How did Krieger know he wasn’t at the Esplanade, unless he’d called every hotel in Berlin? Karl felt himself about to vomit and ran to the toilet. He made it just in time. The sound of retching woke Freddie. He found Karl kneeling over the toilet with dry heaves. 

“Karl?”

Karl rested his head on his crossed arms. “Start packing. We have to get to the central Berlin motor pool, check out a car, and leave.”

“Are you ok? Do you think you had something bad for dinner?”

Karl weakly waved Freddie away. “I just need a few minutes. Just get us packed.” Karl decided there was no need to get Freddie distracted. Calm, rational thought was going to get them out of Berlin unnoticed.

Leaning against the engine of the convertible staff car parked at the top of the hill, Freddie watched Karl, who was standing on his luggage on the rear seat, slowly panning with the binoculars for any kind of landmark. It reminded him of the first time he’d met Karl. He’d been doing the same thing outside of Stalingrad. When Freddie asked his new commander what he was doing, Karl had replied, “Ranging ducks.” Karl had jumped down to the ground. “If we don’t find any damn Russians, we can go duck hunting.”

Today, they were lost somewhere on the old Czech border. What wasn’t a forest was meandering grain fields, interspersed with unmapped _bauernhofs **[2]**_ and unremarkable hill crests. The last village was no more than a shrine and a deserted inn. “Finkie, I never thought I’d say I hated Bavaria,” Karl called to Freddie. He lowered his binoculars and jumped down to the packed gravel road. “But, today I fucking hate Bavaria.”

Freddie and Karl leaned over the map spread on the hood. “How the hell do you hide a town of 20,000 people?” Karl asked as he lit a cigarette.

“No landmarks?”

“Not even a barn. Every hill and stream look the same.”

“Hey,” Freddie said. “Church bells.” He and Karl stopped to listen and determine which direction the bells where. 

Karl traced the road they thought they were following on the map and found a small notation. “Here. An old _waldkirche **[3]**_ for pilgrims.”

“Finally.” Freddie grabbed the map, and Karl jumped in the driver’s seat. 

When they found the tiny church in the forest, Freddie went in to talk to the priest or bell ringer. He found an old man lacking teeth and more than willing to give him directions. Except, Freddie had no idea if the man spoke German. Freddie smiled and motioned toward the car. Karl was leaning on the hood now, smoking yet another cigarette. He sighed as the old man followed Freddie. “Why didn’t you just get directions?”

Freddie pulled the map out of the car. “Because I don’t think he speaks German,” he whispered.

The old man cheekily saluted Karl. “ _Grüss Gott_[4], mein _Ha’mun **[5]**_.”

“ _Grüss Gott_ , mein Herr,” Karl answered cheerily. Freddie was from Dortmund near the Netherlands where not only did they speak Platt Deutsch but a Rhenish dialect. The old man spoke a variety of Franconian. It was only a few vowel and consonant shifts, and the written language was the exact same, but aurally, it defeated Freddie. For ten minutes, Karl and the old man exchanged war stories, cigarettes, schnapps, and finally directions. 

Once on the road, Freddie glanced over at Karl. “You understood him?”

“Of course. He spoke like the wood cutter on my parents’ farm. Makes his own schnapps. Lost a few toes to frostbite in France back when.”

Freddie thought Karl too urbane to have grown up on a farm. “You grew up on a farm?”

Karl smiled. “Oh, God, no. We’re only about fifty kilometers away.” After finding the larger road and a signpost for Falkenheim, Karl asked, “Are you going to give back my magazine?”

Freddie didn’t look at Karl. He’d been wondering when this was going to come up. “Maybe. Let’s see how you’re feeling next week.”

[1] Graf/Grafine: Count/Countess, a hereditary title/rank carried on in the male line. 

[2] Farm. In Bavaria, a large well known farm or historic farms are often signed.

[3] Forest church

[4] Grüss Gott: (May) God bless (you). The traditional Southern German greeting. 

[5] Corruption of Hauptmann—Army captain. 


	5. Monday, July 24

###  Monday, July 24

Gerti Rahm loved the Hitler Youth, the organization not the actual children. It gave her a chance to escape her own children. Her four children stayed at home with her mother while she put on her uniform each morning and reported for duty. The previous HJ leader had been elevated to the regional office in Nuremberg, and some active duty officer named Klenzendorf was due on August 1st. Gerti thought that meant she would be the one organizing the final details for the summer training weekend. She had been surprised when two soldiers, a captain and a sergeant, showed up in middle of the afternoon on Saturday asking for the building keys. 

The sergeant was a nice enough looking young man in his mid-twenties with golden hair and striking blue eyes. His hair wasn’t curly, but the waves in it gave his sweet face a feminine air. The captain, though, Gerti’s first thought was that his frightening blind eye, might not be truly blind. It stared at her, and she couldn’t help but want to avoid it. He was gruff and efficient with an unusual accent, the verbal bullets of Prussia blended with the lazy drawl of Bavaria. Now they were banging around in the storerooms and attic.

“Fraulein Rahm,” was called sharply from the stairs

Gerti steeled herself for the captain. “Yes, Captain?”

Karl walked into the main office with bedraggled note papers in his hand. “Is this really the inventory my predecessor created?” He held up the handwritten lists of vague notations.

Gerti bit her lips. “Yes.”

Karl’s scrambled eye bored into her. “Alright,” he said with deep resignation. “Finkie, this is it!” he yelled out the office door and then left. Gerti relaxed, and Karl suddenly popped back around the corner. “Fraulein Rahm, is that a pistol in your skirt?”

Gerti looked down. “Oh, yes.” She pulled it out and waved it back and forth. Karl’s eyes, even the blind one, popped as he tried to track the random arc of the barrel. “Herr Wesser let me keep it around.”

“So, its _Jugend_ property and not personal property?”

“Is that a problem?” 

Karl smiled as much as he could with a wildly waving pistol in front of him. “We’re going to clean and inventory all the rifles and pistols. If I could get that from you?”

Gerti frowned. She loved the pistol. It was so…powerful. “I suppose.” She pointed the pistol at Karl’s gut, and he gingerly took it from her hand. “I’ll get it back?”

Karl nodded and left. In the stairwell he leaned with relief on the wall as he looked down at the pistol. From its weight, it felt loaded. He dropped out the magazine and checked the chamber. Yes, he could have been shot in his own office by his own ditzy secretary. He went downstairs to the big room that had been set up as a classroom. Freddie had all the rifles and pistols laid out on tables. There were nearly a hundred rifles and nine pistols. 

“Fraulein Rahm’s been running around with a loaded Luger.” Karl laid down her pistol with the rest. “She wants it back.”

Freddie rolled his eyes. “Is she getting it back?” Freddie still hadn’t given Karl the magazine to his pistol.

Karl smiled. “Of course, she is. Less the firing pin.”

Freddie shook his head. “Well, sir, I think we have one of every Mauser made since the G98. There are forty kadet rifles. Twenty nine K98ks, amazingly all with their cleaning kits and bayonets. All the rest are odds and ends. Pistols are five Walther P38s and now five Luger P08s. Plus ours.”

“Any idea when they were last cleaned?” Karl picked up a random K98k as did Freddie.

Freddie opened the bolt and checked to be sure the chamber was empty. He grimaced at the grunge he saw. Using the cleaning rod, he popped out the magazine. “I’m going to guess these were last cleaned at the factory.”

Karl had put his finger in the chamber of the rifle he picked up and was trying to rub the oily dirt off his fingers. “I’d agree with that.” Looking around, he saw days’ worth of work. “Hundred guns, twenty minutes a gun because they’re so disgusting. What’s that? 2000 minutes divided by 60 is thirty-three hours?”

Freddie thought a moment. “Yes, sir.”

“God, two solid days of gun cleaning.” Karl thought he may as well have been asked to clean the Augean stables.

“You want to let the kids help?”

Karl exhaled deeply. “No. Let’s get the rifles back into proper order ourselves. I think the best idea here is to assume the boys have had no competent training or skills. After we clean them all, we can take all the Kadet rifles and K98s out and check the sites. Get all the serial numbers today, make a list of supplies for cleaning, then go out to the hospital supply, and check all that out. We can start cleaning tomorrow.”

Freddie picked up a pad and pencil. “Yes, sir.”

“I’m going to go review the plan for the summer training weekend.”

“I’ll let you know when I leave for the hospital, sir.”

Upstairs, Karl opened the file folder happily titled _Best Hitler Youth Weekend Ever!_ in what he recognized as Gerti’s enthusiastically loopy penmanship. As he read over the list of activities, he thought that it was going to be a very busy weekend with not enough adult supervision. They definitely needed a few more sergeants, or even privates. Right now he’d take grandfathers with walking sticks who could do no more than yell, “Stop that!” But, he’d already been told not to ask for more adult help. It was him, Freddie, and Gerti. 

“Oh, fun. The bonfire will be a book burning,” he sarcastically noted to himself. He noticed that the boys and girls were going to be participating in different activities. As he read over the girls’ list, he became concerned. “Fraulein Rahm, could you come here please?”

Gerti bustled into Karl’s office. “Yes, Captain?”

“Is this right that the girls are going to, and I quote, _learn the mechanism and procedure for impregnation_?”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

Karl looked up at Gerti. “Aren’t some of them,” and Karl held his hand barely above the level of his desk. “A little young?”

“We’ll be using the official BDM training posters.” She went back to her desk and returned with several posters which she unrolled for Karl. 

Karl stared at the posters showing the correct male and female anatomy. “You’re going to explain penetrative intercourse to girls as young as ten?”

Gerti was taken aback. “Absolutely not!” she gasped.

“Then what are you going to tell them?”

“That the little swimmers start here in the little grey ovals, travel through the boy’s body to the girl’s body, and encounter the egg here at the ovary.” Gerti traced the path with her finger, jumping from one poster to the next.

“And you don’t think they’re going to have some questions about how the jump between posters happens?”

“Oh, no. They’re much too young to learn _that_. I’ll just explain that it happens when boys and girls kiss and get too close. If you leave room for the Holy Spirit between you, you can’t get pregnant.”

Karl felt his eyebrows inching up. “Is that right?”

“Didn’t you learn that in the old days?”

Karl immediately wanted to protest he wasn’t that old and that the Holy Spirit was infinitely thin and flexible. “I was afflicted with Benedictine brothers and Carmelite sisters. There was absolutely no talk of where babies came from.”

“So, you’re Catholic?” Gerti assumed that Karl was from Berlin, and either a Protestant or an atheist. He hadn’t shown up at the parish church on Sunday.

“Or, so my family endeavored. But, back to the girls. I’m uncomfortable with this.”

“But, Captain, one of the purposes of the BDM is to prepare Aryan girls for motherhood. How are they going to be mothers if they don’t know where babies come from?”

Karl was so intensely uncomfortable that his stomach was seizing. “Just keep it age appropriate. I don’t want any parents complaining.”

“Of course. And, Herr Finkle can do the boys.”

Karl almost stopped breathing. “He’ll be thrilled.”

Gerti rolled up her posters and walked back to her desk just as the phone began ringing. Karl let her answer it. “Captain, it’s for you.”

Karl picked up his phone. “Klenzendorf….Really?....When today?....Right. We’ll be there.” He hung up then neatened his desk. “Fraulein Rahm, I have to go out. Hold down the fort?”

Gerti was preparing to type up conscription notices. “You can count on me.”

Karl walked across the office with his hat and belt in one hand and his _feldbluse_ in the other. “Finkle!” he yelled down the stairs.

A very faint, “Yes, sir?” came back.

“Get dressed. We have to go to a formation at the hospital. It’s mandatory.” Karl came back to Gerti. “The keys to the _kugelwagen_ , please.” Karl pulled on his _feldbluse_ and buttoned up while waiting for Gerti to rummage up the keys. By the time he had them in hand, he was ready to go. He told himself to get a key rack so that they didn’t have to wait for Gerti to look in every desk drawer.

“What’s this about?” Freddie asked as Karl drove them out to the Falkenheim Military Hospital. 

“I’m guessing what happened last week.”

“Is that why we suddenly raced out of Berlin?”

Karl sighed. “He wanted to get us out of harm’s way. He had no idea what the repercussions might be.”

Freddie wanted to say something very harsh about Walther Krieger, but he had no idea how Karl still felt about him. Freddie hoped Karl saw him for the cruel, narcissistic SOB he was. Karl never said much about his affair with Krieger, but Freddie saw bruises on Karl more than once. Karl brushed them off as Krieger liking to box with him. Freddie thought they were more likely from Krieger preferring to inflict pain before and during sex.

“And, if I ever see him again, I am going to blow his fucking brains out,” Karl murmured.

Freddie turned to stare at Karl. “Sir?” Karl had on his sunglasses, and his face was inscrutable.

Karl shook his head. “Nothing.” Karl kept his eye on the road. He turned into the hospital’s park like grounds and saw the immense formation beginning to take shape. After parking the _kugelwagen_ , he and Freddie looked for an adjutant or anyone with a clipboard. They were directed to a group of soldiers who were seconded to the hospital. Another sergeant asked for their _soldbuchs **[1]**_ , copied down their names and _wehrnummers **[2]**_ , flipped through and made a special notation that they had attended the formation, then stamped them.

“Sir, after this, all officers have to personally retake their oath with the commandant. It’ll be in the cantine. Just wait for them to call your name.”

Karl nodded and steered Freddie into the ranks. 

“Take new oaths?” Freddie asked.

“You read the news,” Karl said quietly. “The entire Wehrmacht and especially the Army is under suspicion.”

Freddie looked around him. The men and few women he saw were average, ordinary Germans. They all looked tired or bored or as if this was a waste of their time. Freddie imagined most would rather be seeing patients, reviewing medical records, or having a cigarette and talking about almost anything but the war. As he glanced around, he saw a few people taking out cigarettes and showing off photos in their cigarette cases. Karl had wandered up to the officer rank and was taking out his cigarette case. Freddie knew there were two photos in there, but in two years, Karl had never shared them. Freddie assumed it was either his parents, who were dead, or perhaps someone he’d been in love with, though that might be a dangerous photo given Karl’s proclivities. He didn’t imagine the photos would be too sentimental. Karl wasn’t. 

“I can’t believe this shit,” the sergeant next to Freddie groused. “I’ve got motor reports up to my eyeballs to deal with, and I’m out here in the sun waiting around for a doctor, whose a great doc but not battalion commander material, if you know what I mean, to get out here and read some statement from Berlin.”

Freddie nodded. “Yeah. We’ve got stuff to do.”

“Damn right. How else are we going to win this damn war? It isn’t by standing around in formations.”

Freddie edged away from that sergeant. He looked down at his wristwatch. The formation was supposed to commence at 1300. Everyone out here had probably missed lunch. The PA system was finally turned on and the scratchy microphone squealed. From what Freddie could see, the hospital commander would not be giving a speech. Instead, there was a short man in a suit. Freddie rolled his eyes. Gestapo. The short man took out a sheet of paper and began to read it. It was a screaming screed demanding the men and women of the Wehrmacht retake their personal oaths to Hitler in light of the recent plot against the Führer. And, from now on the military salute would be replaced with the German Greeting. Freddie’s stomach sank. The military had managed to maintain the fiction that it was separate and invulnerable to the Party. Freddie couldn’t think of a single soldier who had ever admitted to membership in the Party, past or present. That polite fiction was now over. Freddie raised his right arm and repeated the oath. It was followed by three vigorous Heils.

The formation was dismissed, and Freddie found Karl talking to two other officers and laughing along with them at something. Karl could wander into a train station and wander out with a list of phone numbers and several invitations to drinks or dinner. Freddie was continually amazed by the man’s ability to be liked. 

Karl saw Freddie standing off to the side and excused himself after another round of handshakes. “I have to do the in person oath,” Karl groused. “Why don’t you go down to supply and get us a generous allotment of Ballistol?” He handed Freddie the keys.

“Yes, sir. I’m also going to poke around for some wagon parts. It’s ticking when it should ting.”

“Sure.” Karl had no idea about anything mechanical. “If I’m not back to the car, you know where I’ll be.” He walked across the wide green lawn to the hulking hospital. Inside it was cool and dim in the corridor. He had to ask several _schwesters **[3]**_ which way to the cantine. When he arrived at the basement level cafeteria, he found a crowd of men leaning on the tiled grey walls under a haze of cigarette smoke. What a waste of their time, he thought. He heard a sergeant repeatedly telling the officers to turn in their _soldbuchs_ and wait to hear their names called. Karl walked down the corridor to a table with three harassed sergeants, a stack of _soldbuchs_ ten high and two meters long, and three humorless, dark suited men. Karl added his book to the pile. The names weren’t being called with any efficiency or order as far as Karl could tell. As the officers waited, the haze of smoke grew to a cloud which began to descend.

“Klenzendorf!”

Karl stubbed out his cigarette and presented himself to the table of sergeants. “Klenzendorf.”

One sergeant thrust Karl’s _soldbuch_ at him and jabbed the air with this thumb. Karl smiled and thanked the sergeant when he took back his book. He walked into the officers’ cantine proper, which could seat fifty, but was empty except for the hospital commandant, an adjutant, and the three men in suits. 

“Heil Hitler,” the tired commandant said raising his sore arm with effort.

“Heil Hitler,” Karl responded. He found it amusing that the hospital commander had forgotten the most basic bit of military courtesy, juniors greeted seniors.

“Take the oath,” the adjutant said, just as tired as his commander. “With the salute.” The adjutant held up a card with the oath hand-written on it.

Karl held out his arm. "I swear to God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to the Leader of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that as a brave soldier I shall at all times be prepared to give my life for this oath.[4]"

The commandant nodded, and Karl lowered his arm. “Thank you, Captain,” he said shaking Karl’s hand. Only now did he see Karl’s eye. The commandant tried not to look horrified. “Who operated on that eye?”

Karl grimaced. “Some Army doctor in Poland, sir.”

The commandant wanted to apologize for his colleague’s ineptness. “You’ll need to get a final stamp from the gentlemen.”

“Yes, sir.” Karl crossed the cantine to the three Gestapo agents. “Gentlemen.”

“Your _soldbuch_ ,” one said curtly.

Karl handed it over.

After leafing through it, the man returned to a particular page. “This isn’t your first _soldbuch_?”

“No, it isn’t.”

“Where is the first?”

“It was so saturated with blood after I was shot outside of Moscow, the hospital adjutant replaced it.”

“That was 1942.” The man could see that almost all the handwriting in the book was the same with the same ink and pen nib. 

“At Kursk my uniform and _soldbuch_ caught fire. The hospital adjutant decided that too many of the pages were burnt around the edges. He replaced it.”

“Page five is not filled out. Do you have an _Ahnenpass **[5]**_?”

Karl gritted his teeth. He reached into his left pocket and removed the red booklet. “My parents are deceased.”

The Gestapo agent opened the _Ahnenpass_. “Father is Major Maximillian Jozef Graf von Imrech, died 1917, Ypres. And, mother is Marie Klenzendorf, died 1918, Berlin. Unmarried. Who cared for you after your mother died?”

“The von Imrechs. Leopold Graf von Imrech was appointed my guardian, and he chose to send me abroad for my education when I was fourteen.”

The man looked up. “ _General_ Leopold Graf von Imrech?”

“Yes, sir. He passed away in 1943.”

“And no other von Imrech relatives?”

Karl’s right eyebrow arched in extreme irritation, and his scrambled right eye burned with resentment. “The von Imrechs graciously allowed my mother to live over the carriage house while she continued to scrub their floors so that Max’s bastard child by the seventeen year old maid was not brought up in some squalid _mietkaserne **[6]**_ over a gambling den in Rixdorf[7],” he said bitterly. “I was not part of the family nor was I ever acknowledged by them except for my financial and educational maintenance.”

The man vaguely smiled. He enjoyed discovering people’s squalid little secrets. He picked up his pen and transcribed Max von Imrech’s and Marie Klenzendorf’s information onto the page, each name followed by a cross to denote they were deceased. He flipped to a back page, wrote in the date, and precisely stamped the page. “Good day, Captain. Heil Hitler”

“And, good day to you, too. Heil Hitler,” Karl said, recovering his manners. He tucked his _soldbuch_ and _Ahnenpass_ into his pocket and left. Once he was out of the hospital, he went back to where he’d parked. Freddie had fallen asleep sunning himself in the back seat with his shirt and shoes off and his pants rolled up to his knees. “Sergeant Finkle.”

Freddie hastily sat up. “Sir.”

“You’re turning pink,” Karl warned as he got in the driver’s seat. “Well, one afternoon wasted.”

[1] Soldier’s book. This was the primary identity document for Wehrmacht and replaced the civilian ID. It recorded everything about a soldier, including biographical data, pay, issue items, decorations and awards, assignments, and leave.

[2] Military number.

[3] Hospital nurse

[4] The official oath instituted in July 1935. It replaced the Reichswehr Oath: _I swear by God this holy oath that I want to ever loyally and sincerely serve my people and fatherland and be prepared as a brave and obedient soldier_ _to risk my life for this oath at any time._ The Hitler Oath replaced loyalty to the country and people with loyalty to Hitler the man as well as changed _sincerely_ to _unconditional_.

[5] Ancestral record. It had space to go back fifteen generations.

[6] Rental barracks: Large rental apartment blocks built for workers in Berlin in the later 1800s

[7] The old name for Neukölln. It was changed in 1920 in order to disassociate the area with an unsavory past.


	6. Tuesday, July 25

###  Tuesday, July 25

“Are we going to take apart the firing pin assemblies, sir?”

Karl groaned. “Now that would be a bitch.” He caught his cigarette before it dropped ash onto the rifle he had disassembled. “How bad is it?”

Freddie made non-committal noises. 

“Tell you what. We’ll clean them all really well. Any that don’t fire, we’ll turn in to the hospital arms room and let them deal with it. Why do a bunch of kids even need a hundred rifles?”

Freddie shrugged. “It seems like this building was a real dumping ground.”

“Careful, Finkie. You’re insulting my new mistress.” Karl rammed a patch down the barrel for the fourth or fifth time, and it still came back filthy. “I swear to God, someone deliberately packed this one with dirt and oil.”

Freddie laughed as he looked over at Karl. What he saw was embarrassingly sensual. As usual, Karl was rakishly disheveled despite Freddie’s best efforts. Karl sat in an old chair. He’d dispensed with his _feldbluse_ and cotton shirt, as had Freddie. All the shirt either wore was a sleeveless undershirt. The taut muscles of Karl’s bare arms were highlighted by the slight sweat from the summer temperature. He’d let Freddie cut his hair that morning, but his hair still lay whichever way it wanted. The intensity on Karl’s face was reassuring as he cleaned the rifle. And though Freddie never saw the attraction of cigarettes, seeing one clamped in the corner of Karl’s mouth made Karl seem all the more masculine.

“How long have we been down here?” Karl asked.

Freddie snapped out of his reverie. “An hour, sir.”

Karl looked at the cleaned pile. “And we’ve cleaned five rifles. Damn. It’s going to be a very long day.”

Near midday, Gerti came down to the first floor. “Captain, there’s a call for you.”

Karl was reassembling a rifle. “I’m not in the office.”

“But, I already told them you were downstairs.”

Karl sighed. “Finkle, when you finish that one, let’s go find something to eat.”

“Yes, sir. Hopefully there’s a beer garden around here.”

Karl winked. Freddie was a lightweight when it came to his alcohol. “Who’s on the phone, Fraulein Rahm,” Karl asked as he followed her upstairs.

“Herr Vogelfluss. He’s in charge of scheduling the kids to pick crops during harvest season. You have to take them out there, supervise them, and bring them home.”

Karl tried not to groan. He sat down at his desk, answered the phone, and took distracted notes. In the end Herr Vogelfluss liked to talk to people and boss them around. Karl had dealt with people like him his entire military career, except that Herr Vogelfluss wasn’t in the military. Most likely he had been a minor Party functionary elevated to a civil service job through patronage or nepotism. Karl was leaned back in his chair, his feet on the desk, absently waiting for Vogelfluss to quit talking. “Yes, thank you so much, Herr Vogelfluss,” Karl interjected forcefully when the man stopped to breathe. “Any other details, please feel free to leave them with Fraulein Rahm. Heil Hitler.” And, he hung up while he had the chance.

He stopped at Gerti’s desk before going back downstairs. “Fraulein Rahm, if I am not physically in my office, I am out of the office.”

“Well, of course you are.”

“What I mean is don’t tell anyone where I actually happen to be. Just take a message. And, no more calls from Herr Vogelfluss. Handle him yourself.” Karl returned downstairs, where the finished pile had only grown by one. 

That night, seeing how many rifles were left, Karl took several upstairs to the apartment. It was originally part of the attic, the left side now converted, hastily Karl thought. But, it had a kitchen, bathroom and shower, a living area combined with a sleeping area. There were two eyebrow windows on the back side. It was dim, in need of paint, and furnished with cast offs. As Karl first looked on it, he thought it was better than a lot of places he’d slept the last five years and was not burdened with oppressive cabbage rose wallpaper, prints, or fabric. 

Freddie was tired of cleaning rifles. He had cleaned more rifles than Karl during the day and assumed Karl brought some upstairs to even out the chore since Gerti had called Karl upstairs frequently. He and Karl ate dinner sitting in the leather club chairs as Karl had set up the rifle cleaning on the dining table. After dinner, Karl resumed cleaning rifles while drinking whiskey and smoking. Freddie took out his old, pocket sized sketch book and his graphite pencils. Karl heard him drawing. Karl had originally attributed Freddie’s strictness to regulation and attention to detail to being a freshly minted sergeant. Then he’d seen Freddie drawing that first night in the company and learned more than he thought possible about the floral trade over two cups coffee. Freddie was precise because the flowers he spoke of so lovingly needed an orderly hand. Without one they’d either grow wildly out of control or die.

Figure drawing had always intimidated Freddie. He was embarrassed to keep looking at people. Moving through some town in Poland and bivouacking in a school, Freddie not only helped himself to a fresh set of pencils, a tray of watercolors, and a brand new pocket sketch book, but a small wooden mannequin. The mannequin, which he named Herman, helped immensely in learning the proportions of the ideal figure. Freddie still thought his rendition of hands was off, but he’d become a much better sketcher over the course of the war. And, tonight, Freddie was surreptitiously drawing Karl cleaning a rifle. Even though he and Karl had been lovers nearly two years, Freddie was still embarrassed to sketch him. He was also nervous that the _feldjaegerkorps_ might find his sketch books and use them to convict him under Paragraph 175[1]. He tried to vary his subjects, but he was Karl’s driver, clerk, secretary, and _offiziersbursche_[2]. He and Karl were nearly always together.

“I’ve always enjoyed the smell of cleaning fluid,” Karl mused. “I never thought I’d be saturated with it though.” 

“Whoever’s been taking care of those rifles should be shot with one.”

“It’d be quicker and safer to butt stroke him.”

Freddie glanced up. Karl rarely talked about his experiences in the war at all. “Have you ever had to do that?”

Karl didn’t look up. “Use the butt end? Yeah,” he answered quietly. Karl didn’t want to elaborate. A cracking skull had a sickening sound. He tapped the cigarette’s ashes into a small glass ashtray. “Fraulein Rahm is going to explain to the girls how to get pregnant at the HJ weekend.”

Freddie grimaced. “Isn’t that something parents should do?”

Karl shrugged. “She wants you to tell the boys.”

Freddie groaned. “Boys don’t want to know how to get a girl pregnant. They want to know how to convince a girl to let them screw her and not get her pregnant. Oh, my God.”

“Just make sure to include the use of condoms. The last thing I need is to be in charge of the HJ unit with the most pregnancies.”

“What? You want me to use a cucumber to show them how to put one on?”

Karl laughed as he held the rifle to the light and looked over it. “Anyway, you’ve got two weeks to figure out how to do it.” Satisfied with the rifle, he laid it on the table with the others he’d finished cleaning and took a good drink of whiskey.

Freddie looked over his sketch of Karl. He thought the hands could look better, and in this sketch the hands were important. Karl was holding the rifle on his lap, the butt barely pressing into his thigh and his hands cradling the stock. His gaze was upwards, with a slight smile, at the tip of the barrel. It reminded Freddie of the way a man would look at a lover sitting in his lap. He felt himself blushing and closed his sketch book. 

The travel clock softly dinged, and Karl carefully and quietly got out of bed. He paused to see if Freddie was slightly awake. Freddie lay so still he didn’t even seem to be breathing. Pulling his greatcoat from the garderobe, Karl silently went downstairs to his office. He locked himself in and didn’t turn on the lights. He used his fingers, barely touching anything, to find the radio he’d noticed shoved aside in his office. He turned it on, and the windows glowed allowing him to see the dial. Laying on the floor under the coat, Karl slowly tuned the radio until he found the BBC. He waited for the distinct four note tone to signal the start of the hour. With a scrap of paper and a pencil, he made quick notes about the progress of the Allied advances in the East and West. Once the news was finished, he turned off the radio and reset the dial to the far left. 

He lay there a moment thinking about the map in his mind. The Americans and British were still tied up in Normandy, but the Russians were moving toward the Tannenberg line. Karl guessed that there was only another year or eighteen months left. The average German might not realize how hollow the German army and armaments industry were, but he had. As a general’s aide, he had access to a disturbing trove of secret intelligence. And there was simply no way a country as small as Germany, even with her embattled possessions, could ever counter the industrial might of the United States or the sheer number of soldiers the Russians could muster. 

Karl got out from under his coat and put the radio back. He wondered if there was an old atlas anywhere in the junked up storerooms. He turned on his desk lamp and sat down to have a cigarette from the box he tossed in his desk drawer on Monday. It was odd having a cigarette without being able to look at her picture. It was the only one he had anymore. And, he hoped his dearest friend from Heidelberg had made it out.

[1] This is the official section of the German Criminal Code which criminalized homosexuality. In 1935, the paragraph was separated into _a_ and _b_ , with _b_ concerning solely bestiality. However, the Nazi’s only finalized a plan kicking around the Reichstag for nearly ten years. The 1935 law did criminalize intent.

[2] Officer’s valet, bat man


	7. Thursday, July 27 & Friday, July 28

###  Thursday, July 27

Letting the warm water of a shower run over him was almost as wonderful as sitting in a steaming hot bath. The HJ building had no hot water. Karl dreaded taking a shower. He would, but he was going to make it a hasty necessity. They’d spent all day out with the rifles, testing their firing mechanisms and the sight alignments. Most had been in good order despite years of abuse. The only hitch in the day had been when Freddie came up behind Karl and tried to massage his shoulders while they packed up. They were completely alone under trees bordering a grassy field the HJ used for a rifle range. When Karl had felt hands gripping his shoulders, he jumped then violently took down Freddie. No matter how many apologies, hugs, and assurances, there’d been a subtle cooling in Freddie the rest of the evening. Karl knew his jumpiness needed to be better controlled. He couldn’t be tossing twelve year olds to the floor if they surprised him. It was so hard not to feel the terror that came from the last time he was grabbed from behind. Every time he felt a hand on him, he was terrified that the pain would be next. 

“Fuck it,” Karl muttered to himself. He disassembled his safety razor and took out the blade. He also tipped out a Pervitin. He cut the pill into quarters, then carefully crushed one quarter on his shaving mirror. He only needed to feel good for a few hours. He used the razor to finely cut the powder and crushed it again. When the Pervitin was suitably pulverized and arranged in lines, Karl leaned down and snorted it off the mirror. He dragged his finger over the glass to get the finest grains and rubbed that on his gums. Steeling himself for the cold blast, he stepped into the frigid water. “ _Gottverdammt_![1]”

By the time Karl finished his shower, he was feeling chipper and alert and ready for whatever life might bring. When he was young, it was nights of drinking, dancing, and sex. Tonight, it would just be allowing Freddie to touch him. He wrapped a towel around his hips and walked out into the apartment. Freddie was hanging up uniforms and brushing tiny bits of dust from them. Karl walked over to him and grabbed him by the cheeks, kissing him hard.

Freddie struggled to break free from Karl’s kiss. He steadied Karl’s sheepishly grinning face and looked in his good eye. “You are so high right now.”

Karl’s arms came around Freddie’s waist. “You want it or not?” he asked with a high pitched giggle.

Freddie only considered saying no for a moment. He kissed Karl forcefully in reply. 

###  Friday, July 28

Karl didn’t sleep after he and Freddie had sex. It wasn’t love making; it was wilder and rougher. Freddie was glad that Karl didn’t normally get high before sex or in the evenings at all. When Karl was popping or snorting Pervitin, it was because he really needed to stay awake for a long time or something was so anxiety inducing Karl needed the amphetamine to focus his thoughts and steady his nerves. By the time Karl went downstairs to the office, he had a headache. He could either take more Pervitin or drink coffee. He chose coffee and aspirin and showed up in his office with a mug in his hand.

“Heil Hitler, Captain Klenzendorf,” Gerti said from behind her typewriter.

“Heil Hitler, Fraulein Rahm,” Karl answered automatically.

“Heil Hitler, Captain Klenzendorf,” another feminine voice said from behind him. 

Karl whirled around and saw a blonde headed girl with braids sitting in one of the smaller desks sorting conscription notices. “Who’s this?” he asked in a startled voice, pointing at the girl and whirling back to Gerti.

“That’s Magda Forster. She’s always here.” Gerti kept typing.

“What does she do here?”

“Whatever needs to be done.”

Karl eyed the girl. “What are you doing now?” he asked.

Magda didn’t look up. “I’m sorting the conscription notices into the fastest possible delivery route.”

“You don’t have a map,” Karl said suspiciously.

“It’s in her head,” Gerti dramatically whispered.

Karl decided this was minutiae he didn’t need to be involved in and proceeded to his office. He groaned as he looked over the list of things he needed to attend to. He had loved being a company commander and battalion executive officer in the field. Doing Krieger’s hatchet work had also been personally rewarding. He loved intimidating self-important colonels, especially the ones who banged on about being a graf. This was like being at a training battalion where memos had to be written and checklists attended to. “Fraulein Rahm, can you come in here? I need to dictate a Memorandum for the Record.”

Gerti grabbed her steno book. “A what?”

Karl was making himself comfortable in his desk chair. He propped his feet on the desk. “A Memorandum for the Record. I am writing a memo detailing the situation as I find at, what I’ve done, and anticipated future issues. We don’t have the adult supervision we should for the HJ weekend. We wouldn’t get away with this at a training battalion, we shouldn’t even be attempting it with children. I’ve been told, ordered, not to cancel it, so we are going to participate in the fine military tradition of covering my ass.”

[1] God damn it!


	8. Monday, July31

###  Monday, July 31

Freddie was scrambling eggs for breakfast when Karl dragged himself to the table. As usual, Karl had spent Sunday mostly drunk. It was a toss-up as to whether he would spend Monday high. By Tuesday, he usually had himself under control for a few days. In the field, they hadn’t had these problems, but in garrison…. Freddie honestly preferred being at the front with Karl. Karl needed either an adrenaline rush or amphetamines balanced with barbiturates, coffee, and alcohol. Freddie brought him a cup of coffee and kissed Karl’s bearded cheek. 

“I have to go to the hospital to pick up my pay,” Freddie reminded Karl.

Karl sipped his coffee and squinted at the clock. “Ok. See if the pharmacy will give you any aspirin for me. My head hurts so bad the furniture is vibrating in neon blue.”

Freddie didn’t suggest that Karl stop using drugs. That had been a terrible experiment every time. “Yep.” He brought breakfast to the table and watched as Karl struggled to eat two eggs and a piece of fried bread with jam. He wished he could get Karl on a scale. He hadn’t eaten well at all in the last month. Freddie hoped this assignment would be good for Karl physically and mentally. The man’s body was wrecked, and emotionally, he skated along a fine precipice.

“You ok today?” Freddie finally asked. “You look pale.”

Karl gave Freddie a sideways glance. “I’m fine. I just don’t spend my Sundays lying about the Grunewald.”

“Maybe you should.” Freddie thought getting Karl out under the trees on a dappled stream bed might be good for him. At least he wouldn’t be so pale.

“Next you’re going to tell me I need a need a long hike in the crisp, Alpine air. No, thank you.” Karl picked up his coffee cup. “You get going. I’ll handle the dishes.”

Freddie was immediately suspicious. Karl never volunteered to clean anything other than a rifle. “You sure?”

“How the hell else am I going to snort some cocaine or cook it into some heroin for a good old-fashioned speedball?” Karl asked in frustration to Freddie’s overweening attention. “Go. I’ll be fine.”

Freddie sighed. At least Karl didn’t like needles. “Alright,” he said getting up from the table. He hugged Karl from behind and felt Karl trying not to tense up. “I will hopefully be back midday.”

Freddie softly and rhythmically knocked his hand against the tiled wall in the hospital basement. Pay was distributed in the hospital’s enlisted cantine. Not knowing the procedure, Freddie arrived at seven am and was happily one of the first in line. The hospital had a shift change at six am, rounds from seven to eight am, and finally commander’s visitation from eight to nine. Most of the staff wasn’t free until then. 

“Next!”

Freddie walked up to the paymaster’s table. The pay officer, a chaplain this month, an adjutant, and a pay clerk were there to hand out the pay in cash. He handed over his _soldbuch_ to the officer.

“What unit are you in, Sergeant Finkle?”

“We were seconded to HJs from Third Panzer, sir.”

The chaplain looked up. “We? Who else is with you?”

“Captain Karl Klenzendorf, but he’s a special-case officer,” Freddie said lowly, in case others could hear him.

The chaplain sighed heavily as he signed and stamped the _soldbuch_ authorizing pay. Special-case officers were often uncontrollable prima donnas with outsized egos and little care for the messes they created. “God be with you, Son. See the clerk.”

Freddie took back his book and walked to the next table. An adjutant and a clerk were sitting there. The clerk looked up at Freddie as Freddie handed over his _soldbuch_. “Freddie Finkle?”

Freddie recognized the red-haired brown-eyed man from Baden. “Georg Springer?”

Georg nodded. “How are you? Looks like you’ve been out and about,” he said pointing to Freddie’s wound badge and a silver infantry assault badge.

“And, proud to say I haven’t needed the attentions of the medical corps too often.” Freddie watched Georg count out his pay. “Yourself?”

“I don’t have a chest full of medals, but there are advantages to staying in the rear with the gear and the _schwesters_. What are you doing here?”

“HJ’s in town. I got assigned a special-case officer in ’42 right before Stalingrad.” Freddie counted his pay himself.

Georg signed the pay book and handed Freddie a pen. Special-case officers were usually the sons of politically or socially important people. They had personal minders assigned to them to keep them alive and do their errands. “Holy crap. Whose kid is he?”

“No clue. Page five[1] of his _soldbuch_ is completely blank.” Freddie counter-signed. “But, he has kept me busy. Man has a damn death wish. If he wore all the decorations he actually rates, he’d jingle. The best was him blowing up a tank at Kursk as a grenade went off about four feet from him. You know how hard it is to beat the flames out on a man screaming about his eye?”

“Wow,” Georg whispered. “Could he be a Hohenzollern or Hapsburg bastard?”

Freddie shrugged. “Hey, let’s get a beer someday in town.” He needed to move along or else the line would get cranky. 

“You bet. Good luck with you BesFOf[2].”

“Frau Betzler.” Herr Gottlieb called from his desk as he saw Rosie walk into her office. “There is a new _Jugend_ officer. Some Captain Klenzendorf. Go make a call on him today.”

Rosie stared at her desk, where she had not even sat down. She wasn’t openly against the _Jugend_ , but she did actively question some of the activities as age appropriate. And, she always advocated for dancing and etiquette instruction. It wasn’t that the children were out playing in the woods and having organized games. It was that they did it with weapons while being brainwashed. “Of course, Headmaster Gottlieb. Anything special I should ask?” she asked as she walked into his office.

Gottlieb had managed to keep his school because he was a passably enthusiastic party member and a committed atheist who had lost a leg and been gassed multiple times on the Western Front. In 1933, he had his Great War portrait blown up and hung in the outer office and the foyer. And he often wore his medals, so that the children would see he too had once been young and formidable. He had not always been a middle aged man, peering over the steel rims of his glasses at students who received poor grades and misbehaved.

“Can you ask if it is normal to install an ammunition bunker next to the coal bunker? I can’t find my manuals from the last war to check.” Gottlieb winked at Rosie. 

Rosie stifled a laugh. “Of course. But, it seems proper to me. We weren’t using the cellar except to store the books, extra desks, anatomy skeletons, and PE equipment.” 

Gottlieb dramatically shrugged. “And, my wife made him a little torte and cut some flowers from the garden. Take that over, will you?” He nodded toward a small cardboard box tied with a fancy taffeta bow from a once chic ball gown and a bouquet of flowers gently wrapped in old Christmas paper that had been carefully folded and refolded.

Rosie nodded. Frau Gottlieb had three sons in 1938, now she had three foreign graves and doted on any stray thing that might wander too close. “I’ll go over around 3.”

“Thank you. Walking all that way with my leg is so hard.”

In his private, paneled office, Karl reviewed the revised schedule for the summer HJ weekend along with the requisition list. He couldn’t believe he was stuck here. Karl knew he had been saved from a field court martial and execution, so he was slightly grateful to be alive. He was more relieved that Freddie hadn’t suffered because of him.

“Finkle,” Karl called. “Finkle. Finkle!”

Fraulein Rahm walked into the office with the typed list of children participating. “He’s got the headphones on. Ever since he figured out how to catch civilian radio waves, he’s been glued to that thing.”

Karl smiled. “That is why he was a great driver in the East. He could fix anything. Thank you for the list. You made more than one copy, didn’t you?”

Rahm rolled her eyes. “ _Verdammten **[3]**_ ,” she hissed as she took back the list. “Always need a copy,” she walked away muttering. “One baby isn’t good enough; it’s supposed to be twins.” She glared at Friedrich Finkle dancing alone in the corner with the official radio. “Ok, kids, it’s time for a typing lesson. Who would like to type all the names for this coming weekend?”

The various teens who volunteered to help in the office looked at one another. Fraulein Rahm was such an enthusiastic busybody. They came to the HJ office to hang out and get away from their mothers not actually work. Their attention was distracted when the door burst open with a cheery “Heil Hitler!” and a cold terror swept over the young teens.

“She doesn’t sleep in a coffin all month,” one of the girls gasped. School had only let out last week.

“I heard that, Gabbi Eckhardt,” Rosie said with a smile.

Karl looked up from inspecting his miniature panzer division on his desk. He stared across the long red carpet at the strawberry-blond force approaching him and was unable to move. Barely gathering his wits, he jumped up and hastily walked in as dignified a manner as he could muster. He had forgotten to button his shirt, pull up his suspenders, or put on his _feldbluse_. 

Rosie eyed everyone in the room. “Heil Hitler, Gerti. I see you’re putting your education to use.”

Fraulein Rahm barely managed a Heil. Assistant Headmistress Betzler had terrorized the pupils of Brunnerbach _Realschule_[4] for years, insisting on proper etiquette, decorum, respect, and grammar. She even had a riding crop she would smack the tardy with as they tried to run into the classrooms. Whenever a sullen student muttered something about telling their parents, Frau Betzler had eyed the teen and coldly whispered, “Go ahead.” Few parents ever complained about Rosie’s disciplinary methods.

Rosie held out her hand. “Grüss Gott, Assistant Headmistress Rosie Betzler of the Brunnerbach Realschule. Our students are in your HJ troop.” 

Karl took Rosie’s hand. “Captain Karl Klenzendorf.”

Rosie smiled pertly. “Hmm, you’d think they would at least have enough respect for the children to send us someone with two functioning eyes. Is there a Frau Klenzendorf or any young Klenzendorfs I should expect to enroll at the school?”

Karl assumed a wistful, far-off look. “No, I lost my childhood sweetheart in a terrible accident, and I’ve just never been able to get over it.”

Rosie smirked. If he thought she couldn’t spot a lie at thirty paces,…. “How awfully sad for you. Well, Headmaster and Frau Gottlieb send their regards, this torte, and some flowers to welcome you to our little part of the world. He lost his leg in the Great War and walking all this way is uncomfortable for him.”

Karl’s eyebrow raised skeptically. The school was three or four streets away at most. He smiled graciously as he accepted the little box and flowers. “Finkle. Finkle. Finkle!”

Freddie looked up. He jerked off the headphones. “Sir?”

“A vase for the flowers.” Karl held out the bouquet.

“Ohhh. What lovely _Alstroemarias_ and these _Asteraceae_ are to die for. Magda, come help me and bring some gloves. The Als have nasty sap.” Magda groaned before getting up and following Freddie.

“Freddie Finkle. His parents own a flower shop in Dortmund,” Karl explained. “His dream is to be a botanist and discover new orchid species in the Amazon Jungle.”

“That’s a sweet dream,” Rosie said sincerely. She saw how Karl’s eye followed Freddie. Returning to her crisp manner, “You need to button yourself up, Captain. This isn’t a social call.” Rosie swept past Karl and into his office.

Karl pulled up his suspenders as he hastened toward his valet stand. He paused to dramatically close the office doors. “Let’s sit down and have a chat,” he said, pulling on his _feldbluse._ He didn’t even have the buttons and holes aligned before he was enveloped in a crushing embrace. Karl slowly allowed himself to return her hug. She felt too good in his arms.

Rosie stepped back from Karl, her cheeks tinged with a blush, and glanced around the office crowded with a magpie’s collection of junk. “So, I saw how the children are spending their summer holiday. What a lovely desk chair.” Rosie caressed his desk and the ornately embroidered chair. 

“Well, I’m very busy, spending long hours working, you know.” Karl buttoned himself most of the way up.

“I can see that,” Rosie purred as she looked over the toy tanks before she sat down in Karl’s chair. “It’s very comfortable.”

Karl sighed and dragged a chair over to the side of his desk where Rosie sat quite smugly. “How can I help my darling Schatzie?” 

Rosie’s face softened, and she smiled as she leaned toward her oldest friend. She gently held his chin in her hand and turned his face to look closely. “You look good, Karl, except for that eye. Klenzendorf?”

Karl took Rosie’s hand from his face and held it a moment. He kissed the back of her hand, noticing her perfume had changed from a sultry, spicy, sandalwood to a more matronly floral.

“The Wehrmacht isn’t the French Foreign Legion.”

Karl continued to ignore her curiosity. “How did you end up in Falkenheim? This is about as far from Berlin as you can get. We had to pull out artillery maps to find it, and we still got lost twice. ”

“It’s where Paul grew up. His family owned the metal _fabrik **[5]**_ until his mother passed.”

Karl tried to remember if Paul had ever mentioned where he grew up. He recalled meeting the Betzlers at the wedding. They were truly small town Bavarians. “How’s Paul?”

“In Italy last we heard. Two years ago. The Army has no idea where he is or won’t tell me, but they still send his pay every month.”

That sounded very odd to Karl. The Wehrmacht was paid in cash in local currency. Very few, very special people received their pay via the Reichsbank, and Paul was just an engineer. “I’m sorry to hear that. And Inge?” he asked more brightly. He imagined a lovely, delicate young woman of fifteen with her mother’s charming smile and her father’s doe-like brown eyes.

Rosie took a deep breath. Karl had disappeared from their lives with no notice and no goodbye. But, he had doted on Inge. “She passed away last winter from influenza,” Rosie felt the tightness in her throat she always felt when talking about Inge. 

Karl felt his stomach drop. For a moment he had envisioned picking up and whirling around a grown Inge the way he had when she was little. “Oh, Rosie. I’m terribly sorry to hear it. It must have been horrible to lose her without Paul being there.” Without looking he took Rosie’s hand in his. It was still soft and slender, though her nails were prudently shorter.

“It was difficult.” Rosie tried to smile brightly, but Karl knew it wasn’t genuine. “My son JoJo has recently joined the DJ[6], though. And, if you hear any talk about me, it’s that I think most _Jugend_ activities are not age appropriate, and you need to teach the children to dance so they aren’t a bunch of illiterate, uncivilized peasants.”

Karl softly laughed. “How old is JoJo?” Karl didn’t remember Rosie being pregnant when he had last seen her.

“Ten this past June.”

Karl winced. That was a little young to be going to the HJ weekend. “And, he’s coming with us this weekend?”

“His best friend is eleven, so I said yes. You’re not actually going to let them throw hand grenades and shoot rifles are you?”

Karl took a breath. “Rosie, blowing stuff up, that’s the fun part. You know I was shooting a rifle when I was ten.”

“With your father.” Rosie sat back in Karl’s chair. She was not and could not be convinced. “He’s such a sweet little boy,” she sighed sadly. “Until he starts repeating one of the Führer’s speeches verbatim. When we were ten, we were still playing pirate and African explorer, trying to catch frogs in the _see_[7]. The angriest thing we ever heard was Brother Rupert condemning us for wasting chalk. If only Paul were here.”

Karl knew what Rosie wasn’t saying. Her son missed his father, and a fanatical devotion to the Führer was not a good substitute. And, she missed Paul, too. “I’ll keep my eye on him.”

“The good one?”

Karl laughed and nodded. “Yeah, the good one.”

“Well, I think we can only sit in here so long with the doors closed,” Rosie said rising. “I don’t know if there’s enough torte for all the children to share it. It might be just enough for you and Freddie.”

“And, Fraulein Rahm.” Karl led Rosie to the doors and set his hand on the knob.

“Somehow, I don’t think Gerti lives with you and Freddie since she had four children in three years. I never saw a man so eager to be conscripted.”

Karl smiled at Rosie and felt his stomach going all wobbly. He couldn’t tell if she’d allow him a kiss or another hug. He opened the door instead of potentially being rejected. “Thank you for coming by, Frau Betzler. Please, let me know any time the HJ kids can be useful at the school.”

Rosie held out her hand for a genteel handshake and presented her cheek for a kiss. Karl barely kissed each cheek. “Of course, Captain. They luckily sent us real soldiers to stock the ammunition in the cellar next to the coal bunker.”

Karl’s eyes widened appreciably. “Next to the coal bunker?”

Rosie shrugged. “What can you do? Give an unpleasant, small-minded peasant a fancy pin and suddenly he’s as infallible as the Führer.”

“Oh, my god,” Karl whispered. “I’ll make inquiries,” he reassured

Rosie started to walk through the outer office. “The rest of you, grammar and arithmetic test first day of school classes eight, nine, and ten. I expect you will all study well to redeem yourselves from the miserable showings this past June. We can’t have the children of the great German race unable to speak properly in their superior tongue.” She turned around and eyed Karl.

“Absolutely. Finkle, put that on the calendar.”

“ _Javohl **[8]**_. Fraulein Rahm?”

Gerti Rahm grabbed the official calendar. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’d all die in squalor if it weren’t for me.”

Rosie turned one more time. “And the dancing? We can’t have the children of the German race growing up into illiterate, uncivilized peasants.”

Karl smiled with his hands on his hips. “I’ll make inquiries,” he drawled indulgently.

“Ok, then.” Rosie happened to see the vase with the arranged flowers. “You arranged those so beautifully, Herr Finkle.”

Freddie blushed. “Well, my parents do own a flower shop in Dortmund.”

Rosie winked at Karl. “Heil Hitler.”

Karl gave her a lazy hand raise. “Heil Hitler.”

Gerti waited until she heard Rosie’s footsteps at the bottom of the steps and then the front doors close. “Dancing?”

“Why, Fraulein Rahm,” Karl said stepping over to her and taking her hand to raise her up out of her chair. “Certainly,” he said taking her in hand for a fast Viennese waltz. He laughed as he quickly whirled her around the room once or twice. “Ok. Enough fooling around. Let’s get back to work on this weekend, and Freddie get me a call with the local Volksbund or whoever the hell is storing ammo in schools.”

Gerti Rahm was a tad dizzy from being whirled around by Karl. He’d been so gruff since he arrived that she would have never guessed he could dance so effortlessly or even laugh. And, Frau Betzler had seemed like an actual woman not solely the whip wielding school administrator Gerti had always known her to be. 

[1] Page 5 listed the soldier’s parents or wife and his official next of kin. A blank page five would be very, very rare.

[2] Abbreviation for **bes** onderer- **F** all **Of** fizier (special case officer.) This is wholly made up, but not implausible. 

[3] Damn it!

[4] Realschule covers core academic subjects and often specializes in vocational/technical education. It is not university oriented like a _gymnasium._

[5] factory

[6] The Hitler Youth was for youth from 13-18. The Deutsch Jungend was for children 10-13.

[7] lake

[8] Yes, it is willed. Etymologically _Jawohl_ has more emphasis than _Ich werde_ , I will.


	9. Explanatory Notes

##  Explanatory Notes

My Point of View—This fanfic is _solely my imagining_ of what was going on amoung the adults, past and present, in Jojo Rabbit; therefore, it is going to reflect more of my worldview. It is more serious in tone as well as tries to be more accurate as to historic details. I may have overdosed on Hemingway as a teen, so the descriptive parts are not florid, rather bare bones. Imagine the bedspread any color you like. My handling of homosexuality is going to be more in line with class, cultural, and religious mores of the day. Captain K and Freddie are not free to have an open relationship. Brigadier Krieger is a predator and possible sociopath. He isn’t violent towards Captain K because he is gay; he is violent because he has a severe personality disorder bordering on morally evil.

Vocabulary—I have used some German words that may be unfamiliar to readers but have woven themselves into both my family and this work. As for _lunch_ and _mittagsessen_ , they get used interchangeably. I try to manage _supper_ and _dinner_ as separate meals, but as an American I also use these interchangeably for the evening meal. 

Timeline—In this work, I have chosen to fit the timeline of the movie from August 1944, to May 6, 1945, which also gives more time to explore the adult characters interactions and shifting motivations.

Where is Falkenheim?—The book Caging Skies takes place in Vienna, Austria, which was overrun solely by the Soviets. The real Falkenheim, Germany is a small suburb of Nuremberg, mostly a freidhof (cemetary), the south train station and modern housing developments. In the movie we have both Soviet and American troops in the town at the end. This could be a function of which re-enactors were available and what gear they brought. However, if the two armies were going to link up in or near southern Germany, it would have been on the Czech-Bavarian border. The movie was also filmed in and around Prague. Using these parameters, I have shifted the location to the Bavarian-Czech border between Furth im Wald and Flossenberg, placing it in a very rural, forested, mountainous area but with connections to Nuremberg and Regensberg and historic roads going both north-south and east-west. 

Freddie—My Freddie is a much stronger character than the silly sidekick. Freddie also accepts his sexuality much better than Karl. Freddie has just never had any interest in women at all. He realized he liked men romantically once he was in the army. Karl is the first long term relationship he has ever had, and it has to be kept quiet. An enlisted man functioning as a bat man, even an unusually devoted one, to an officer in the class conscious Wehrmacht might not too unusual, although historical accuracy is doubtful.

Unfortunately, his relationship with Karl is not one of equals. It is explained to Freddie when he is first assigned to Karl’s company that his job is to keep Karl alive lest the captain go out in a blaze of reckless glory, or with the indignity of an overdose, due to interest in Karl from very senior people. His _soldbuch_ has no parents or relatives written in it, but amoung the general officers, Karl is known to be the illegitimate nephew of a highly respected and influential general. Given their differences in age, rank, and social class, Freddie is the submissive but indispensable partner of the pair. Without Freddie, Karl would have died at various times. Karl knows this and treats Freddie as well as he can; however, Karl is still an alcoholic and drug user with various sources of PTSD as well as enough psychological conflict to keep a therapist employed. Karl is arrogant, entitled, and oblivious.

Captain K’s Eyeball—Does he still have his eye and is just blind in it, or was his eye enucleated and replaced with a really bad prosthesis? I have no idea and really can’t decide. I’ve seen World War II era German prosthetic eyes, and they were made quite artfully and competently in all colors. They may not have been very comfortable though.

_Other topics, such as Captain K, Rosie, sexuality/homosexuality, will be covered in future notes appended to other sections. This work runs to almost 400 pages on my Mac as it nears completion, so if you have questions, please be patient and let the whole thing be posted._


End file.
